Thursday, April 22, 2010

Sunshine Sight at Big Cartel

I have been looking for a new, different, or alternate venue to sell online for some time now. I haven't stopped looking, but I've decided to throw down some roots at Big Cartel and see if it works out.

I found the place when I was looking for a former fellow 'Etsian' a while back. There used to be a seller on etsy called "artandghosts." I remember 'hearting' her shop when I first set up shop there... and at some point I went back through my etsy favorites and discovered that she had disappeared from the site. Fortunately, as she is quite talented, she's not dead or anything horrible like that. She simply moved on. I found her on her blog: http://artandghosts.typepad.com/ which was where I found her Big Cartel shop. I was intrigued. And so, I decided to learn more about the site....

I also decided — around last October — that I wanted to come up with a different name to brand my artwork and products. "sarahkdesigns" is literally something I scrawled onto a piece of scrap paper in the breakroom at work one night when I was trying to come up with a name for a seller account on ebay. Remember when ebay seemed like a good place to give it a try? Yeah.

While sarahkdesigns is obvious — I am Sarah K, well, it's so obvious that other people use it too. It annoys me to google myself and find other people. That and my name is Sarah Knight, which is apparently like the "John Green" of female names. It's not quite "John Smith" common, but my — there are a lot of us Sarah Knights!

Besides that, I have looked around etsy at the successful print sellers usernames. While there are the folks who simply use their first name, there are more that don't. Creative folks like theeye, BirdNerd, strangefascination, arabbitgirl, ThisYearsGirl, mincingmockingbird, atwhim, and papermoth (to name a few) have more branded identities... So, I needed something more original, more arty, and less generic. I also decided to make this decision around Halloween, I'm not quite sure why.

I was going to pick "A moment's sunlight." Why? Because it's my favorite line in the Youngblood's song "Get Together" — which I had stuck in my head for weeks after having seen the movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" — which is one of my favorite books. It's a long name though.

So, I was brainstorming alternatives and through the process of elimination (again, while at work in the middle of the night) came up with Sunshine Sight. It's got that lyrical quality to it — not unlike "plastic acid" but apparently doesn't quite seem like such a stoner drug reference. Plus "Sunshine Sight: illustrations by Sarah Knight" conveniently rhymes with my name.

Sunshine was also apparently the runner-up to "Sarah" when my mother was deciding my name. Sunshine Knight - get it? Oh, Mom.And, as someone with an openly sarcastic streak, Sunshine has always been the de facto sarcastic nickname bestowed upon me by co-workers. As someone who enjoys their sarcasm, I find that amusing.

I apparently also decided to open on "Earth Day" : )So, go outside and wish the earth a beautiful day today!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I also invite you to participate in my giveawayThe winner will receive a free Mother's Day cardYou can read about it here: send some flowers giveaway